What up, Youtube! It's "ya boi" Thew!
The poor man's Ashens!
The non-gaming Yahtzee!
The British Jobby The Hong!
Won't you join me in my giant metal cage for a cheeky dive into some seriously fishy territory!
It's Transformers Cloud Hellwarp!
Real quick - what the flipping frig is Transformers Cloud?
Well, here's what it is, right -
it's repaints.
All right, so, canonically, it was pretty much a Takara splinter universe thing
from a few years back, when Generations was still just called "Generations"
and it was all luxury Voyager repaints with a conceit of basically,
"Hey, this guy is this guy now! Isn't that crazy?"
Like, Starscream was Blitzwing and Rodimus was Springer
and Prime was...
and look, Skywarp's a shark! Isn't that crazy?
Yes. Well done. Very droll.
So, say "hell-o" to Hellwarp,
a Skywarp-centric repaint of Generations Sky-Byte,
and I don't really know where to start.
Like the colours are sumptuously sinister and the sculpting's on point, but like
oh, hey, we started!
But mechanically and spiritually it's all so weird and creepy and not necessarily good?
'Cos like, with Sky-Byte, yeah, he was physically horrifying,
but he had that sorta cartoon beatnik charm, and the patented Spellos smoothness
to cushion his unnerving beastliness!
But as Hellwarp, it's just naked, carnal ichthyic body horror!
I mean, check out his gangly ass! He's like some kind of emaciated scarecrow fish ghoul!
Like, the head's just pure nightmare diesel,
with his sunken cheeks, bloodshot eyes,
and straight-up Mouth of Sauron with his teeth all grey
and the weird little wizard hat with the 'orrid sinewy techno-fin!
Torso's just dominated by this horrifying shark head thing
with its haunted eyes and exposed teeth
and like, this rotten roboty Deceptiwedge blasted through it?
And check out these chitinous kibble-wings
and the fins flappin' around like some kind of mutant beetle moth!
Legs bring the fear factor down a peg, with like these silly scrawny shin bones, with like football armour on
and these daft little flipper slippers!
We're gonna need a bigger butt!
And the arms are super weird! Like they're kind of posable enough,
and I dig the little retractable shoulder fins.
But this one's mostly a kind of ropey clamshell?
Love the villainous boney-fingered claw there, like the icy touch of death itself!
But like, without a wrist swivel, it all feels a bit rigor mortis.
And the other one's a kind of golden claw-whisk thing
with this seriously unsavoury purple missile, with like veins, and
- it's a dick.
So he is a good fun figure to pose, but like, he doesn't have a lot of dramatic range.
Like, he's just got one semi-useless permanent Mephistopheles hand
and one thing that's not a hand?
All panto villain, all the time!
Anyway, because Takara were so bloody pleased with their parallel planet and its premium price point,
they packed each Cloud toy with a veritable reading list of two comics!
Like, there's the main Cloud story, which is all magical girls and
interdimensional space-time soft science bibble and scrub-level translation
and there's Hellwarp's mini spotlight origin story
where basically Skywarp gets hurt and Megatron brings him back as a shark.
Why? Why!?
And then he fights some dudes or whatever
and then at the end, he stays friends with Thundercracker. Aww!
Wait, is that friggin' Hellscream? Right on!
Ohhh, wait. Hell-scream, Hell-warp. I get it.
So yes, Hellwarp's a deeply unpleasant fish-demon-arsehole
and everything about him makes me uncomfortable!
I mean, there was something jovial and goofy about Sky-Byte and their mutual grand-uncle Cybershark
but Hellwarp just focuses in on the pure animalistic terror of what this creature actually is!
Like, it's so primal and predatory, it's almost like this is a toy of one side of Skywarp's psyche?
The bloodthirsty edgelord that Skywarp could become if he had no class?
Or it's just some dumbass overpriced repaint that I'm reaching for reasons to enjoy
'cos I blew forty quid on it.
Nightmare shark monster, kinda resembles Skywarp - isn't that crazy?
That was a haiku.
[CRUSHING CRUSTCORE BREAKDOWN]
Transformation's such an awkward sod!
There's a lot of panels and a lot of tenuous tabs
and a lot of reaching and a lot of "just about!"
O, hai fish!
This shark mode's a superbly sleek mecha-shark fish bitch!
Check out this meaty megalodon with this cyborg-ass Terminator face,
all silver sheen and salmon pink eyes and golden heiroglyph guyliner!
So, as a creature, it's an adorably daft bit of electro shark therapy!
Definitely an over-abundance of panels and life pipes on the go!
It's a marvellously mechanical cybernetic apex predator in a permanent jump arc
which can apparently fly AND teleport?
But I kinda feel like it should be more posable?
I don't know what I was expecting, 'cos sharks are basically
prehensile meat tubes with a mouth on the end
and I can't reasonably expect the whole thing to do like a sharky shimmy,
but like, the fins barely move, and the mouth can just about manage a soggy sigh
and with this kind of resigned, hunched posture, he just looks so beleaguered!
Ass end's a bit more fun though, with the sassy waggle and the cheeky speedboat swivel
and a tiny baby gun for some reason?
[SMACK!] Ooouuaaaaggh!!
So Hellwarp's shark mode is pretty neat, but I don't feel like I can put it down.
Not 'cos I'm soooo riveted, but like, what do I do with it?
'Cos it hasn't got wheels or feet, or even a flat bit.
And if I just plonk it down somewhere, I feel like all the panels are gonna unpop.
He does have this tiny hexagonal cloaca hole here, which I assume is for a flight stand or something
so cheers for not including one.
Overall, I dunno if I necessarily dig Sharknado Connor here.
I mean, it's absolutely fun and charming and unusual,
and it's a quality Voyager figure, and God knows I can't resist a Skywarp,
but it all feels a bit contrived.
Like, he's not quite the shark to the system he thinks he is.
Come on now, it's a Skywarp-themed repaint of the only Generations Car Robots figure, AND it's a shark.
Isn't that crazy?
YES.
But it's not CLEVER crazy.
Like, Cybershark was a super weird OG design that worked in and of itself,
and Sky-Byte was interesting 'cos they took this totally weird and unwieldy design
and made it into a main cast member,
but THIS guy? Come on.
You just took that and painted it like that. Big deal.
And it would have been crazy to make a shark version of any character!
But as a Skywarp fan, I'm kinda glad it happened this way.
'Cos otherwise, honestly, I probably wouldn't have checked out Sky-Byte, and it is quite good!
So I guess what I'm saying is,
yes.
Fine, Takara. I DO like it.
It IS crazy.
But I SEE you.
Smile, you son of a
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Robocentric vocabugasm.